| ### Ninth Tractate ### DETACHED CONSIDERATIONS ###  |

| #### Chapter 1 |

| #### #### "The Intellectual-Principle" [= the Divine Mind]- we read [in the Timaeus]- "looks upon the Ideas indwelling in that Being which is the Essentially Living [= according to Plotinus, the Intellectual Realm], "and then"- the text proceeds- "the Creator judged that all the content of that essentially living Being must find place in this lower universe also." #### Are we meant to gather that the Ideas came into being before the Intellectual-Principle so that it "sees them" as previously existent? #### The first step is to make sure whether the "Living Being" of the text is to be distinguished from the Intellectual-Principle as another thing than it. #### It might be argued that the Intellectual-Principle is the Contemplator and therefore that the Living-Being contemplated is not the Intellectual-Principle but must be described as the Intellectual Object so that the Intellectual-Principle must possess the Ideal realm as something outside of itself. #### But this would mean that it possesses images and not the realities, since the realities are in the Intellectual Realm which it contemplates: Reality- we read- is in the Authentic Existent which contains the essential form of particular things. #### No: even though the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual Object are distinct, they are not apart except for just that distinction. #### Nothing in the statement cited is inconsistent with the conception that these two constitute one substance- though, in a unity, admitting that distinction, of the intellectual act [as against passivity], without which there can be no question of an Intellectual-Principle and an Intellectual Object: what is meant is not that the contemplatory Being possesses its vision as in some other principle, but that it contains the Intellectual Realm within itself. #### The Intelligible Object is the Intellectual-Principle itself in its repose, unity, immobility: the Intellectual-Principle, contemplator of that object- of the Intellectual-Principle thus in repose is an active manifestation of the same Being, an Act which contemplates its unmoved phase and, as thus contemplating, stands as Intellectual-Principle to that of which it has the intellection: it is Intellectual-Principle in virtue of having that intellection, and at the same time is Intellectual Object, by assimilation. #### This, then, is the Being which planned to create in the lower Universe what it saw existing in the Supreme, the four orders of living beings. #### No doubt the passage: [of the Timaeus] seems to imply tacitly that this planning Principle is distinct from the other two: but the three- the Essentially-Living, the Intellectual-Principle and this planning Principle will, to others, be manifestly one: the truth is that, by a common accident, a particular trend of thought has occasioned the discrimination. #### We have dealt with the first two; but the third- this Principle which decides to work upon the objects [the Ideas] contemplated by the Intellectual-Principle within the Essentially-Living, to create them, to establish them in their partial existence- what is this third? #### It is possible that in one aspect the Intellectual-Principle is the principle of partial existence, while in another aspect it is not. #### The entities thus particularized from the unity are products of the Intellectual-Principle which thus would be, to that extent, the separating agent. On the other hand it remains in itself, indivisible; division begins with its offspring which, of course, means with Souls: and thus a Soul- with its particular Souls- may be the separative principle. #### This is what is conveyed where we are told that the separation is the work of the third Principle and begins within the Third: for to this Third belongs the discursive reasoning which is no function of the Intellectual-Principle but characteristic of its secondary, of Soul, to which precisely, divided by its own Kind, belongs the Act of division. ####  |